Product description

Accompanying a landmark BBC television series, "Science Story" traces the breakthroughs in every area of science from classical times to today. Throughout, the award-winning authors show us the big historical picture too. Great science happens when brilliant minds collide with new discoveries and tools at specific points in time. These intriguing and sometimes quirky insights are summarized in unique 'Connections' diagrams throughout the book. And we see the powerful and poignant human stories behind the discoveries. Scientists have always struggled against prejudice and closed minds - often their own. It takes a great deal of evidence to shift our world view. Challenging many of our assumptions about the history of science this is the perfect guide to where science has come from and why it is so vital today.

Author information

Michael Mosley's background is fascinatingly diverse. After studying politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University, he worked for two years as a banker in the City of London. He then left to study medicine, before becoming a producer and presenter of science programmes for the BBC. Following his work on an award-winning documentary first broadcast in 1994, which revealed a proposed link between Helicobacter pylori and gastric ulcers, the British Medical Association gave Michael a gold award and the title of Medical Journalist of the Year. John Lynch, the Head of Science at the BBC, is an award-winning producer, director and author. As a producer and director he made several television series, covering everything from the eruption of Mount St Helens to the Nobel prize-winning discovery of buckminsterfullerene and the dinosaur-hunting expeditions in the Gobi Desert. He was the executive producer of the BBC's international hit 'Walking With Dinosaurs', netting a BAFTA and an Emmy in the process. He has also written the books Wild Weather, Walking With Cavemen and Earth: The Power Of The Planet, which accompanied their respective BBC television series.

Table of contents

Introduction 1. Cosmos - What is out there? 2. Matter - What are we made of? Including:?Democritus invents the atom | Aristotle's four elements | Hennig Brand and the 3. Life - Where did we come from? 4. Power - Can we control nature? 5. Medicine - Can we live forever? 6. Mind - What is human nature? Further reading Glossary Index